Japan's largest business daily Nikkei said that the Nexus 7 is taking over mainly because of price

Apple's iPad is notorious for being king of the tablets, but in Japan, this may no longer be the case.

Market research firm BCN conducted a survey in Japan last December to see what the tablet market share was looking like. Out of 2,400 consumer electronics stores in Japan, the iPad had 40.1 percent of the market while Google's Nexus 7 claimed 44.4 percent.

Japan's largest business daily Nikkei said that the Nexus 7 is taking over mainly because of price. The Nexus 7 costs $199 USD while the cheapest iPad -- the iPad mini -- is $329 USD. Both the Nexus 7 and iPad mini are 7-inch tablets.

However, the report did note that some stores in Japan have run out of the iPad mini, which may have affected the results a bit.

Google's Nexus 7 is a tablet made by ASUS. It runs the latest version of the Android operating system, 4.1 Jelly Bean, and packs various features like a 7-inch IPS display with a 1280x800 resolution, a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor, a 1.2 MP front-facing camera, NFC, Bluetooth, 802.11n wireless, GPS and 16GB/32GB versions. The 16GB version starts at $199 while the 32GB runs $249.99.

Pretty much. Android hardware is just catching up with where the iPad was two years ago. Tegra 4 tablets, when they eventually come out, are still going to be behind the iPad 4 that Apple released in October. That said, eh, better off waiting on the mini to be upgraded. Good as it feels in the hand it doesn't seem like it'll be worth it until they double its resolution, not for $320.

I suppose its worth it for people who want the apps (they all still run great on iPad 2 level hardware) and don't mind the screen at the expense of the form factor. Retina display or bust here.